Early this morning, Apple Music hit the critical South Korean market, land of K-pop, Samsung phablets, and ultra-fast broadband. But paid music downloads, once a critical component of the iTunes Store, are nowhere to be found in the iTunes upgrade. Instead, users are being funneled into an Apple Music streaming subscription, with prices landing at roughly $7.99 a month for individual plans and $11.99 a month for family plans."

JeyBeMust wrote:I think that the Spotify "free tier" did an amazing job bringing people to the streaming world. But now that paying for Netflix, Apple Music or Spotify "paid tier" is so usual, they should limit the free suscriptions and add more benefits to the ones who pay every month.

I'd say the better keep it for some time - there's still so many demographics that don't even know what it is

Are those Glory news really reliable? Didn't Britney just add Apple into a Facebook post?

Yes streaming is the future, but it's nonsense to close the iTunes store. There will always be enough people that like downloads, especially high quality downloads. iTunes already developed such a format (Mastered for iTunes), and they could start offering real 24bit etc. and sell it at a premium price.

Yes streaming is the future, but it's nonsense to close the iTunes store. There will always be enough people that like downloads, especially high quality downloads. iTunes already developed such a format (Mastered for iTunes), and they could start offering real 24bit etc. and sell it at a premium price.

I'm glad it is not true. I think that customers should have different options always and let people who enjoy buying an album keep doing so. What I'm afraid is that digital sales will become a residual percentage like vinyls or CD's in a few years.

Apple should promote Apple Music spending big bucks, but not focusing on stealing clients to Spotify but adding new users that neither buy songs on iTunes nor use any legal streaming platform.

Apple Music just became more affordable for everyone. Apple stores and select retailers have rolled out a new 12-month Apple Music gift card, priced at $99. That comes out to $8.25 per month, which is about an 18% savings compared to the standard rate of $9.99. Or you could look at it like you’re getting about 2 months of service for free when you pre-pay for your upcoming year.

The new gift card recently launched at Apple stores, but you’ll have to hit up another retailer if you’re looking to buy it online..."

So I have a question. I'm thinking about getting a new Ipod Touch with Apple Music and I have a few questions first.

1. How bad does Apple Music exactly mess up the old library?

2. So I have access to the whole Itunes store. Do I understand correctly, that I can add EVERY track to my library to listen to even in offline mode? That song appears in my Itunes just like a normal mp3 that I own?

3. Does the synchronisation work properly?

4. Whenever I add a song to my library, does it act just like a normal mp3 apart from being able to be burnt on cd or played on non-apple products? Like, does the playcount synchronise? When I listen to it 10 times, does the playcount say "10"? Or does that not work?

I know it would be easy to just try it for three months, but the decision for a new Ipod is directly linked to these informations

Many miles many roads I have traveled Fallen down on the way Many hearts many years have unraveled Leading up to today

BillyBlitzkid wrote:So I have a question. I'm thinking about getting a new Ipod Touch with Apple Music and I have a few questions first.

1. How bad does Apple Music exactly mess up the old library?

2. So I have access to the whole Itunes store. Do I understand correctly, that I can add EVERY track to my library to listen to even in offline mode? That song appears in my Itunes just like a normal mp3 that I own?

3. Does the synchronisation work properly?

4. Whenever I add a song to my library, does it act just like a normal mp3 apart from being able to be burnt on cd or played on non-apple products? Like, does the playcount synchronise? When I listen to it 10 times, does the playcount say "10"? Or does that not work?

I know it would be easy to just try it for three months, but the decision for a new Ipod is directly linked to these informations

1. I personally didn't have any major issues, but I know other people did. In my case, it only 'split up' a few albums (e.g. I suddenly had two 'parts' of Alicia's 'As I Am' in my library, one with No One and Superwoman and one with the rest of the album). I believe this happened with albums where I bought the singles on iTunes and later imported the rest of the album from elsewhere. And some songs got duplicated or even triplicated for some reason (e.g. I got 3 versions of Alicia's 'Doncha Know' which definitely wasn't the case before), but that's all.

2. I think so, or at least I don't know of any exceptions. You click '+' to add a song or a whole album to your library and a second later it pops up among your other music just like that. Then you can stream it or click on the cloud symbol to download it.

3. Yes, add a song to one of your devices (Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod etc.) and it instantly shows up on all of them. Btw, this also works for music that you got from elsewhere cause it's not available on Apple Music. For example, if you import Miley's last free album, it'll upload it to the cloud so you can stream or download it on your iPod. You no longer have to actually connect to your Mac / PC via USB and 'synchronize'.

4. Apple Music / iTunes Store files are in AAC, not MP3, but you won't notice a difference. You can't burn them on CD, but Apple Music is also available on PC / Android, so you ARE able to listen to your music on non-Apple products. I don't usually pay attention to playcounts, but I just played a song 3 times and the playcount increased by 3, so I guess it works fine. I'm not sure if playcounts synch from iPod to iTunes if that's what you're asking about.

BillyBlitzkid wrote:Thanks a lot Rihab, seems like I'll be getting a new iPod and an apple music subscription soon

You''ll love Apple Music. Its simplicity is stunning, you stop worrying about everything, that song is good? You add it, this it it. With iOS 10 you'll be able to read the lyrics too, is really convenient.

Also, I have a "The 100 most played songs" list and I love how the playcount works perfectly, even between the iPhone and the Mac.

So, can anyone help me with this? I got Apple Music yesterday and it doesn't really work the way I want it to be. It is still in the middle of fusing my library and the cloud, I have already added two albums to my cloud from Apple Music and the synchronization with the MP3s is done. Now it won't synchronize properly. It doesn't change the play count the way it should. I listened to a song three times and it only showed "1", all the other songs weren't even changed at all. So what's the problem? Anybody got an idea? Is iTunes confused because there are some songs on the iPod from my hard drive( which are also in the cloud because I had to add them) and some as streams?

Many miles many roads I have traveled Fallen down on the way Many hearts many years have unraveled Leading up to today

BillyBlitzkid wrote:So, can anyone help me with this? I got Apple Music yesterday and it doesn't really work the way I want it to be. It is still in the middle of fusing my library and the cloud, I have already added two albums to my cloud from Apple Music and the synchronization with the MP3s is done. Now it won't synchronize properly. It doesn't change the play count the way it should. I listened to a song three times and it only showed "1", all the other songs weren't even changed at all. So what's the problem? Anybody got an idea? Is iTunes confused because there are some songs on the iPod from my hard drive( which are also in the cloud because I had to add them) and some as streams?

I'm always checking how many times I played an album/song and yeah, sometimes when I use my iPhone, iTunes (on the MacBook) don't show the real number, but waiting a couple hours normally do it.

I've been using Apple Music since the very beginning and I hated how my local library mixed with Apple Music's library so I deleted all of my songs, even the ones I bought on iTunes. Now I have a 9,9999% of Apple Music library and I only add manually the ones that are not on the platform. Is an inconvenience but is the only way the service works properly

"Amazon Music Unlimited has gained 2% marketshare in the streaming racesince last the week of 9/29. We analyzed the top 25k streamed songs at each of the top five accounts, and found that in the last six months, the e-tail giant's service has not only remained the #3 streamery but has moved up from 6-8% marketshare. It was the only service to make an appreciable gain in share during that interval. One likely contributor: the advent of voice-activated gizmo Echo, which became available for the Christmas rush.

Spotify, at around 64% at the end of September, was at 62% the week of 2/23; the Swedish firm, which just announced it has reached the benchmark of 50 million subscribers, remains the 800-lb. gorilla of the platform. Apple Music has remained steady at about 25%.Google Play Music (the audio service, not YouTube) has stuck around 4%, and Tidal at 1%.

Perhaps most notably for the biz as a whole, the 25k songs from each account collectively increased to about 4.5 billion total streams, up almost a billion from 3.6b the week of 9/29."

"Through the first six months of 2017, Spotify and Apple Music have grown their combined total U.S. streams by 60%. When this week ends, the two leading streaming services will have delivered about 160 billion individual song streams, compared with 100 billion through the same period last year.

That's over 105m album equivalents (SEA), or an increase of 40 million. With total album sales down by 18m YTD and track sales down by 94m (9.4 million TEA), streaming has given the industry a YTD increase of more than 12m SEA.

Leading music execs will be celebrating by ordering Swedish meatballs on their iPhones."

I'd really like to know how many of those streams came from Spotify and how many from Apple Music. I have a feeling AM isn't too far behind Spotify anymore, especially since some songs (like WT currently) get like twice as many streams from 'other' streaming services as from Spotify. Most of them MUST come from Apple.

Rihab wrote:I'd really like to know how many of those streams came from Spotify and how many from Apple Music. I have a feeling AM isn't too far behind Spotify anymore, especially since some songs (like WT currently) get like twice as many streams from 'other' streaming services as from Spotify. Most of them MUST come from Apple.

Rihab wrote:I'd really like to know how many of those streams came from Spotify and how many from Apple Music. I have a feeling AM isn't too far behind Spotify anymore, especially since some songs (like WT currently) get like twice as many streams from 'other' streaming services as from Spotify. Most of them MUST come from Apple.